(Saturday, December 24, 1955, Christmas Eve) — The Continental Air Defense Command Operations Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, found itself fielding phone calls from children wanting to know the whereabouts of Santa Claus today after a newspaper ad mistakenly gave the Center’s number.

The result was a tradition continued by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) of tracking Santa’s location the night before Christmas.

(Thursday, December 24, 1925, Christmas Eve) — Battleship Potemkin, a Soviet silent film about the 1905 mutiny by the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin against their officers of the Tsarist regime, opened today in the Soviet Union.